July 2014

July 08, 2014

Here is a new book cover for The Hidden Man demonstrating the use of historical hand-lettered script. I did this with a pointed metal nib and ink on charcoal paper.

In the last few months after one of my portfolio pages was posted on Pinterest I have been getting a lot of calls and emails asking for my "free fonts." Just a reminder: this is unique work, done by hand. When you commission a lettering designer or calligrapher for a project you can rest assured that you are not getting a font that everyone else in the world is using in their projects. Below are a couple of the other versions done for presentation with notes on the process.

Double letters are always tricky, and d's especially. How to make the most of them, yet remain legible? These are two of the more complex variations for a double d.

Subtle refinements, experimenting with different ways of treating the H to balance the loops on the d's, other quirks of handwriting, and how to work with the negative space beetween lines.

This was actually my favorite version. It is done with a transitional pen that gives a little more weight overall. The trade-off is that it is less intimate, and loses some of the handwriting character of finer writing. The loops were also a problem for the legibility at a distance and the character that the title typogrpahy needed to express.